Hillbilly Elegy

cocktail receptions and banquets that
served as both professional networking
and personal matchmaking events. I
lived among newly christened members
of what folks back home pejoratively
call the “elites,” and by every outward
appearance, I was one of them: I am a
tall, white, straight male. I have never
felt out of place in my entire life. But I
did at Yale.
Part of it has to do with social class.
A student survey found that over 95
percent of Yale Law’s students qualified
as upper-middle-class or higher, and
most of them qualified as outright
wealthy. Obviously, I was neither upper-
middle-class nor wealthy. Very few